Fwurg

[Jhovall]

Dear all,

I have played with the idea to let my jedi, Jaicen, the unexperienced padawan, rule a small planet which will aims to become a minor world of the Union. And I would like to share the idea's with you and hopefully get some feedback on it.

The basic idea that Jaicen/I has is to find a small planet near union space and create a technocracy for humans, based on logical programming of droids.
First he will order, create and program some droids, which will serve as his mouth piece and propaganda.
These droids will also go to the planet and make the basic provisions (basic government buildings, etc.).
He will seek help from the IO protocol.
This is all to receive refugees of the mandalorian wars, or refugees from the slave rebellion and other wars to his planet. Everyone without a criminal record :P (or something), will be allowed in, if there is still space.

Of course the Jedi will not like it if one of their own rules a small planet. That is why Jaicen will use droids as ambassadors, other important persons in his world are still able to give advice and travel along, but the main descisions will be made by the droids. Jaicen wants to implement with his reasoning, and he will provide the idea's on which the droids argument and vote. I have not an idea how exactly I will do this, but that is what this thread is for.
This is all to mislead the jedi council :P.

Jaicen himself will be at the Jedi temple, and will communicate by holomail with his droids. Also he tries to find a way to maintain physical contact with his droids.
Also Jaicen tries to find more DME crystals, and more ways to use the force to control his machines over an even greater distance.

Might this be feasable and provide enough roleplaying, or will it too elaborate?

[Elmer]

This sounds like an interesting idea and I believe it will create a lot of fun roleplay.

However, there are some basic problems of which I don't directly have a solution: Your jedi is just bound to get noticed sooner or later. (Probably sooner, during the setup- period.) This idea requires a lot of money, like: The amount a country has, amount of money. I doubt the order will supply your padawan with enough to secretly fulfill his plan, so therefore: How large do you see the beginning will be? A village of 100 people, a town of 1000 people, a city of 10 000 or even 100 000 people. Or do you want to go big and have 1 (which is about 1 000 000 000 people). Because the size of your plan determines the chance of success/detection and the size of meaningful impact.

The communications to the world need to be secret. I don't think the Jedi order scans all the communication data of their employees, but large amount of protected communication with a single settlement is bound to get noticed.

Your jedi needs a good location. The rules state that you need to scan for a location. Of course you are entitled to a starting location if you want to start a world and those rules are meant mainly for economical balancing but giving you a free location might conflict with any future ideas if you want to start a real economy.

I think the setup of the idea will require Jaicen to be on site a lot for the beginning, especially when he has no extra DME crystals. At a certain point the Jedi order will ask questions. Later when the idea is running Jaicen can stay at the order much easier but requires a lot of data.

Summarised, there is the following trade-off: High risk, high reward/ low risk, low impact.

I think Jaicen cannot handle this on his own and he needs allies. He can try to recruit one or more agents to oversee the project? That would solve a lot of problems related to location.

[Jhovall]

Of course Jaicen needs to find allies. I was thinking about contacting the IO protcol, and some other worlds for the scanning-part.
I was first aiming to get about 1e5 till 1e6 people. Which will be notciable, especially if they get a senator in the senate.
The communication can be re-directed to different nodes, messages etc.

I do not really have time to be on site a lot. Although I can fabricate an excuse to send a sponsored "Jedi mission" towards the surveyed place. Which gives him a reason to be there for a longer time.
I think a lot can actually be done from a distance, since droids can handle most of the initial basic registration of the refugees and construction procedures, together with Jaicen's possible ally, which provides the project management on site?

hmmm, This idea is hard to realise, without getting noticed, or having any money, :P

[Elmer]

Yes, having a larger project means having a larger footprint for other people to find you ;)

You can focus your jedi on this plan. By picking the right skills and powers you can easier hide your jedi, but I think this plan will require a lot of time to complete. Which by the way can be a nice thing ^^

Maybe if you see it as your Jedi his end goal to set up a world with senator, than the plan sounds a lot more promising?

[Mercury]

Hey Jhovall,

I am glad that Fwurg has gotten you excited enough to want to play a minor world ^_^ As you know, players can participate in as Jedi, politicians and entire economies and we highly encourage players who participate in one to join in others as well!

This is the first time someone has wanted to start a world centred around their Jedi (or in fact a world centred around any singular person, Jedi or not), which brings some special factors into account that aren't normally an issue when creating a minor world

As you probably know, there are certain requirements made of Minor Worlds, as listed in the rules. For minor worlds, we have the following list of requirements. Worlds must be:

• Sovereign over their entire territory
• Have access to hyperdrive technology
• Be civilized in terms of laws (de facto and de jure) regarding ownership and property, with relatively fair justice and some basic sentient rights
• Not be Sith or other forms of downright evil

The world as you are proposing it conflicts in several ways with the requirements listed, and I want to go over them so as to explain where the issue lies and what, if anything, can be done to resolve them. Afterwards, I will make three possible proposals as to shapes and forms which your idea can take that would make your idea work, if in a somewhat adjusted form.

Sovereignty

Sovereignty is described as the full right and power of a governing body to rule itself without any deference to outside sources or bodies. In essence, it is a fancy way of describing "might gives right".

The world you are proposing fails to meet the sovereignty requirement: to be sovereign is more than planting your newly designed flag on every planet in a system. You also need to be capable of stopping others from doing the same. And by that I don't mean that you can go to them and wag your finger. You need to have the infrastructure to find them, the manpower to respond to them quickly and consistently and most importantly (the might gives right part), when the guns are drawn, you need to be able to force a resolution in your favour.

While I have no doubt that Jaicen, as a Jedi, will be able to stop a hand full of thugs when it comes to it, the matter becomes quite a different discussion when several star destroyers drop in and starts orbital bombardments on your settlement. At this point it won't even matter if you are able to get up there and destroy the invaders, because by the time Jaicen is able to get there, the settlement might already be destroyed.

To be sovereign places a scale requirement on a world. This is why micronations on earth generally do not get recognized by the UN. They aren't sovereign, and as much as the few people behind them might want to pretend, nobody recognizes their coins, their passports or their right to make laws.

Beyond this, you also need to maintain a singular government. That is, you need to be able to keep your people together, not just in times when it is prosperous and everything is going well, but also when it is not prosperous and when things are not going well for you.

Hyperdrive Technology

You will certainly be dependent on existing nations for this (see sovereignty), but in general it is not a requirement that you yourself produce this technology - you merely need to be at a developmental stage where you have this. Obviously a transplanted group from existing, hyperdrive capable civilization will meet this requirement. Therefore your proposal meets this criteria.

Civilization

This one seems the easiest, but it is going to be the one with which you will have the most issue.

The Dark Side

This is where the key problem with your proposal lies. If Jaicen desires to form his own little empire, controlled by him through his robots, and hidden from the Jedi council, is that this basically describes Jaicens fall to the dark side. I don't see a way to carry out such a plan without it: desire for power - which lies at the core of this plan - is literally the most fundamental driving force for most dark-siders. Even if it is not what Jaicen intends, once he decides that he wants power and is willing to hide from the Jedi Council to do so, his fall is basically already assured. Every choice along the way will seem reasonable, and until you suddenly realize you have become a true lord of the Sith.

It is certainly allowed to play a dark-side character - we've had them before - but you should be aware that this does place some severe limitations on roleplaying opportunities and an enormous responsibility upon you as a player to self-censor your actions and plans, due to the meta rules: Fwurg is a PvE, not a PvP game, and it would fall upon you to not create situations where a PvP encounter would occur - even if your plans fail.

But while dark-side characters are allowed - with the above limitations - a darksider world is another story entirely. The Union is not looking for members who reign by bringing terror down upon their people, and that is what you will come to do soon enough after having fallen to the dark side.

Plural bodies

This issue has nothing to do with the world itself, but with one of your plans. While you can use Control Machine to control a droid, and can even do so over some distance, as per the description of the power, you should be aware that there is little chance of you controlling an army in that way. That's not only unrealistic, but it goes so far beyond the powers of other abilities that its highly unlikely such a power would be approved. I'm not saying you cannot expand upon your abilities in this direction, but be aware that there are certain limits which are in place for reasons of realism and overpoweredness.

Solutions

So far I've raised issues, but I want to offer some solutions as well. There are several forms in which your proposal can work:

First off, if you abandon the plan of making this into a minor world, it is not unprecedented, in Star Wars terms, for a Sith lord to establish a personality cult. This won't be more than a hundred or so people, but you can certainly make them into a happy little community on a world somewhere. Maybe in a few hundred years it'll become a minor world, but I cannot guarantee that the Fwurg server is still up around that time.

Secondly, and independent of the first issue, you can of course create a minor world. I would strongly recommend that instead of making it a new community, you make it an existing world which is now joining the Union, same as all the other member worlds. This gives you all the excuse needed as to why your world meets the basic requirements. In this case Jaicen would not be its ruler, however.

Finally, Jaicen might, in collaboration with the Jedi Order, help a group of settlers on a new world. This might be a source of one or more missions which he can undertake with other Jedi. In this case, he would not be a ruler either, but rather a benefactor and likely a local hero. This community might eventually grow into a minor world, where Jaicen would be very popular even if he is not its emperor.

Which solution is the best will depend strongly upon what your purpose is - if you want Jaicen to become a dark sider, then the first is best. If you want to participate in political roleplay asap, I strongly recommend the second. And if you want the story of a heroic Jedi helping a community to prosper, it would be the third. As such, my question to you is: what do you want?

[Jhovall]

Dear Mercury,

Thank you for your essay :).

The nation does not start to be Sovereign indeed, since this will come in time and in the beginning the world will be quite, vulnerable. This is also a reason why they'd love to join the union.

Dark side: Jaicen has no intention to actually fall to the dark side. (Who ever intents to be evil :P ). There is no intention of terror on its people, and Jaicen intention also going to try to build a real democracy, with the difference that they recognize him as some kind of king. The droids are mainly to build the empire in the beginning and to do the administrative work, and to excecute Jaicen's influence/opinion.

The idea basically was that the army would be a droid-like army, like in the attack of the clones.

Solution three might be the best and closest to what I would want. He will not entirely 'rule', but he will be able to guide the people and have a lot of influence on the culture and way of work. I think they would only allow him to to this when he actually is a knight, something which he is not currently, or together with his teacher.

[Brend]

Solution three might be the best and closest to what I would want. He will not entirely 'rule', but he will be able to guide the people and have a lot of influence on the culture and way of work. I think they would only allow him to to this when he actually is a knight, something which he is not currently, or together with his teacher.

Who is the emphasized "they" in this context?

[Jhovall]

The Jedi Council

[Elmer]

Am I correct that you want Jaicen to become some sort of Dalai Lama? A religious figurehead with wise words but no governmental power. Because I think that might work:

As long as Jaicen Hedoss acts like a beneficiary Dalai Lama and gives good (Jedi Council approved) advice, Jaicen can continue his guidance of the settlement. But when he turns into a power hungry pope who wants to force his will, the council intervenes.